The Free Range Part 21

"Where are the cowmen?" asked Sims.

"All in the bunk-house, and the punchers are sleeping out near the corral."

"Yes, I seen 'em. Now you go back to bed an' wait till I hiss through the window. Then we'll have yuh out o' here in a jiffy."

The herder's form vanished in the darkness, and Larkin, his heart beating high with hope and excitement, returned to his bed. Before lying down, however, he dressed himself completely and strapped on the cartridge belt and gun.

The minutes pa.s.sed like hours. Listening with every nerve fiber on the alert, Bud found the night peopled with a mult.i.tude of sounds that on an ordinary occasion would have pa.s.sed unnoticed. So acute did his sense of hearing become that the crack of a board in the house contracting under the night coolness seemed to him almost like a pistol shot.

When at last it appeared that Sims must have failed and that dawn would surely begin to break, he heard a heavy sound in the dining-room and sat bolt upright. It was merely the cow-puncher there preparing to go out and waken his successor. Although the man made as little noise as possible, it seemed to Bud that his footsteps must wake everybody in the house.

The man went out of the dining-room into the mess-room of the cowboys, closing the door behind him softly, and after that what occurred was out of the prisoner's ken.

After a while, however, Bud's ears caught the faintest breath of a hiss at the window, and he rolled softly out of bed on to the floor in his stocking feet. Sims was there and another man with him, and both were prying at the bars of the window with instruments m.u.f.fled in cloth.

"Did you get him?" asked Bud.

"Sh.o.r.e! He won't wake up for a week, that feller," answered Sims placidly.

For a quarter of an hour the two worked at the clumsy bars, a.s.sisted by Bud from the inside. At the end of that time two of them came loose at the lower ends and were bent upward. Then the combined efforts of the three men were centered on the third bar, which gave way in a few minutes.

Handing his boots out first, Larkin crawled headforemost out of the window and put his arms around the shoulders of his rescuers, resting most of his weight upon their bent backs. Then they walked slowly away from the house and Bud's feet and legs came out noiselessly. Still in the shadow of the walls they set him down and he drew on his boots.

It was not until then that Sims's a.s.sistant made himself known.

"h.e.l.lo, boss," he said and took off his broad hat so that Larkin could see his face.

"Jimmie Welsh, by George!" whispered Bud joyfully, wringing his hand. "Did you bring many of the boys down with you?"

"Fifty," replied the other.

"Bully for you! I don't know what would become of me if it weren't for you and Hard-winter."

As they talked they were moving off toward the little river that wound past the Bar T house.

"Got a horse for me?" asked Bud.

"Yes," said Sims, "over here in the bottoms where the rest of the boys are."

"What do you plan to do now?"

Sims told him and Bud grinned delightedly at the same time that his face hardened with the triumph of a revenge about to be accomplished.

"Let's get at it," he said.

"Wait here and I'll get the rest of the bunch."

Hard-winter left them, and in a few minutes returned with a dozen brawny sheepmen, mostly recruited from Larkin's own ranch in Montana. When greetings had been exchanged they moved off quietly toward the ranch-house.

The corral of the Bar T was about fifty yards back of the cook's shanty and as you faced it had a barn on the right-hand side, where the family saddle horses were kept in winter, as well as the small amount of hay that Bissell put up every year.

To the left of the corral the s.p.a.ce was open, and here the Bar T punchers had made their camp since leaving their former quarters. The bunk-house on the other hand stood perhaps fifty feet forward of the barn. It was toward this building that the expedition under Sims took its way.

Silently the rough door swung back on its rawhide hinges and ten men, with a revolver in each hand, filed quietly in. Sims and Larkin remained outside on guard. Presently there was a sound of muttering and cursing that grew louder. Then one yell, and the solid thud of a revolver b.u.t.t coming in contact with a human skull. After that there was practically no noise whatever.

The men outside watched anxiously, fearful that the single outcry had raised an alarm. But there was no sound from either the house or the cowboys' camp. Presently Welsh stuck his head out of the door.

"How is she? Safe?" he asked.

"Yes, bring 'em out," answered Bud, and the next minute a strange procession issued from the bunk-house.

The cowmen, gagged, and with their hands bound behind them, walked single file, accompanied by one of the sheepmen. Without a word the line turned in the direction of the river bottoms, where the rest of the band and the horses were waiting.

To do this it was necessary to pa.s.s behind the cook-house. Bud leaned over and spoke to Sims.

"Can't we get Bissell in this party? He's the fellow that has made all the trouble."

"Sure, Jimmy and I will go in and get him. I had forgotten all about him."

But they were saved the trouble, for just as they were opposite the cook-house, Larkin saw a burly form outlined for an instant in the doorway of the cowboys' dining-room. With three bounds he was upon this form and arrived just in time to seize a hand that was vainly tugging at a revolver strapped on beneath his night clothes.

Had fortune not tangled Bissell's equipment that night Bud Larkin would have been a dead man. s.n.a.t.c.hing off his hat, he smashed it over the cattle king's mouth, and an instant later Bissell, writhing and struggling, but silent, was being half-carried out to join his friends.

Matters now proceeded with speed and smoothness. The prisoners were hurried to where the remainder of the band awaited them. Then, still bound and gagged, they were mounted on spare horses.

Only thirty of Welsh's raiders had come on this trip, the rest remaining to help with the sheep, but their horses had been brought so that there might be ample provision for everybody.

With a feeling of being once more at home, Larkin climbed into a deep saddle, and a wave of triumph surged over him. He was again free, and at the head of a band of brave men. He had the ascendency at last over his misfortune, and he intended to keep it. Then when everything was finished he could come back and he would find Juliet--

The remembrance of her brought him to a pause. Must he go away without as much as a word from her, the one for whom he cared more than all the rest of the world? Quietly he dismounted.

"Let Jimmie go on with the prisoners and the rest of the boys," he said to Sims. "You wait here with me. I must leave one message."

A minute later the cavalcade stole away, following the winding river bank for a mile before setting foot on the plain.

Then, with Sims crouching, armed, behind the nearest protection, Bud Larkin walked softly to the house. He knew which was her window and went straight there, finding it open as he had expected. Listening carefully he heard no sound from within. Then he breathed the one word, "Julie," and immediately there came a rustling of the bed as she rose.

Knowing that she had been awake and was coming to him, he turned away his eyes until he felt her strong little hand on his shoulder. Then he looked up to find her in an overwrap with her luxuriant hair falling down over her shoulders, her eyes big and luminously dusky.

"Darling," she said, "I have heard everything, and I am so glad."

"Then you could have given the alarm at any time?"

"Yes."

"G.o.d bless your faithful little heart!" he said fervently, and, reaching up, drew down her face to his and kissed her.

It was their second kiss and they both thrilled from head to foot with this tantalization of the hunger of their love. All the longing of their enforced separation seemed to burst the dam that had held it, and, for a time, they forgot all things but the living, moving tide of their own love.